1 menu "Code maturity level options"
4 bool "Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers"
6 Some of the various things that Linux supports (such as network
7 drivers, file systems, network protocols, etc.) can be in a state
8 of development where the functionality, stability, or the level of
9 testing is not yet high enough for general use. This is usually
10 known as the "alpha-test" phase among developers. If a feature is
11 currently in alpha-test, then the developers usually discourage
12 uninformed widespread use of this feature by the general public to
13 avoid "Why doesn't this work?" type mail messages. However, active
14 testing and use of these systems is welcomed. Just be aware that it
15 may not meet the normal level of reliability or it may fail to work
16 in some special cases. Detailed bug reports from people familiar
17 with the kernel internals are usually welcomed by the developers
18 (before submitting bug reports, please read the documents
19 <file:README>, <file:MAINTAINERS>, <file:REPORTING-BUGS>,
20 <file:Documentation/BUG-HUNTING>, and
21 <file:Documentation/oops-tracing.txt> in the kernel source).
23 This option will also make obsoleted drivers available. These are
24 drivers that have been replaced by something else, and/or are
25 scheduled to be removed in a future kernel release.
27 Unless you intend to help test and develop a feature or driver that
28 falls into this category, or you have a situation that requires
29 using these features, you should probably say N here, which will
30 cause the configurator to present you with fewer choices. If
31 you say Y here, you will be offered the choice of using features or
32 drivers that are currently considered to be in the alpha-test phase.
35 bool "Select only drivers expected to compile cleanly" if EXPERIMENTAL
38 Select this option if you don't even want to see the option
39 to configure known-broken drivers.
45 depends on !CLEAN_COMPILE
50 depends on BROKEN || !SMP
58 string "Local version - append to kernel release"
60 Append an extra string to the end of your kernel version.
61 This will show up when you type uname, for example.
62 The string you set here will be appended after the contents of
63 any files with a filename matching localversion* in your
64 object and source tree, in that order. Your total string can
65 be a maximum of 64 characters.
68 bool "Support for paging of anonymous memory (swap)"
72 This option allows you to choose whether you want to have support
73 for socalled swap devices or swap files in your kernel that are
74 used to provide more virtual memory than the actual RAM present
75 in your computer. If unsure say Y.
81 Inter Process Communication is a suite of library functions and
82 system calls which let processes (running programs) synchronize and
83 exchange information. It is generally considered to be a good thing,
84 and some programs won't run unless you say Y here. In particular, if
85 you want to run the DOS emulator dosemu under Linux (read the
86 DOSEMU-HOWTO, available from <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>),
87 you'll need to say Y here.
89 You can find documentation about IPC with "info ipc" and also in
90 section 6.4 of the Linux Programmer's Guide, available from
91 <http://www.tldp.org/guides.html>.
94 bool "POSIX Message Queues"
95 depends on NET && EXPERIMENTAL
97 POSIX variant of message queues is a part of IPC. In POSIX message
98 queues every message has a priority which decides about succession
99 of receiving it by a process. If you want to compile and run
100 programs written e.g. for Solaris with use of its POSIX message
101 queues (functions mq_*) say Y here. To use this feature you will
102 also need mqueue library, available from
103 <http://www.mat.uni.torun.pl/~wrona/posix_ipc/>
105 POSIX message queues are visible as a filesystem called 'mqueue'
106 and can be mounted somewhere if you want to do filesystem
107 operations on message queues.
111 config BSD_PROCESS_ACCT
112 bool "BSD Process Accounting"
114 If you say Y here, a user level program will be able to instruct the
115 kernel (via a special system call) to write process accounting
116 information to a file: whenever a process exits, information about
117 that process will be appended to the file by the kernel. The
118 information includes things such as creation time, owning user,
119 command name, memory usage, controlling terminal etc. (the complete
120 list is in the struct acct in <file:include/linux/acct.h>). It is
121 up to the user level program to do useful things with this
122 information. This is generally a good idea, so say Y.
124 config BSD_PROCESS_ACCT_V3
125 bool "BSD Process Accounting version 3 file format"
126 depends on BSD_PROCESS_ACCT
129 If you say Y here, the process accounting information is written
130 in a new file format that also logs the process IDs of each
131 process and it's parent. Note that this file format is incompatible
132 with previous v0/v1/v2 file formats, so you will need updated tools
133 for processing it. A preliminary version of these tools is available
134 at <http://www.physik3.uni-rostock.de/tim/kernel/utils/acct/>.
137 bool "Sysctl support"
139 The sysctl interface provides a means of dynamically changing
140 certain kernel parameters and variables on the fly without requiring
141 a recompile of the kernel or reboot of the system. The primary
142 interface consists of a system call, but if you say Y to "/proc
143 file system support", a tree of modifiable sysctl entries will be
144 generated beneath the /proc/sys directory. They are explained in the
145 files in <file:Documentation/sysctl/>. Note that enabling this
146 option will enlarge the kernel by at least 8 KB.
148 As it is generally a good thing, you should say Y here unless
149 building a kernel for install/rescue disks or your system is very
153 bool "Auditing support"
154 default y if SECURITY_SELINUX
157 Enable auditing infrastructure that can be used with another
158 kernel subsystem, such as SELinux (which requires this for
159 logging of avc messages output). Does not do system-call
160 auditing without CONFIG_AUDITSYSCALL.
163 bool "Enable system-call auditing support"
164 depends on AUDIT && (X86 || PPC64 || ARCH_S390 || IA64)
165 default y if SECURITY_SELINUX
168 Enable low-overhead system-call auditing infrastructure that
169 can be used independently or with another kernel subsystem,
173 int "Kernel log buffer size (16 => 64KB, 17 => 128KB)" if DEBUG_KERNEL
175 default 17 if ARCH_S390
176 default 16 if X86_NUMAQ || IA64
180 Select kernel log buffer size as a power of 2.
181 Defaults and Examples:
182 17 => 128 KB for S/390
183 16 => 64 KB for x86 NUMAQ or IA-64
185 14 => 16 KB for uniprocessor
190 bool "Support for hot-pluggable devices" if !ARCH_S390
193 Say Y here if you want to plug devices into your computer while
194 the system is running, and be able to use them quickly. In many
195 cases, the devices can likewise be unplugged at any time too.
197 One well known example of this is PCMCIA- or PC-cards, credit-card
198 size devices such as network cards, modems or hard drives which are
199 plugged into slots found on all modern laptop computers. Another
200 example, used on modern desktops as well as laptops, is USB.
202 Enable HOTPLUG and KMOD, and build a modular kernel. Get agent
203 software (at <http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net/>) and install it.
204 Then your kernel will automatically call out to a user mode "policy
205 agent" (/sbin/hotplug) to load modules and set up software needed
206 to use devices as you hotplug them.
209 bool "Kernel .config support"
211 This option enables the complete Linux kernel ".config" file
212 contents to be saved in the kernel. It provides documentation
213 of which kernel options are used in a running kernel or in an
214 on-disk kernel. This information can be extracted from the kernel
215 image file with the script scripts/extract-ikconfig and used as
216 input to rebuild the current kernel or to build another kernel.
217 It can also be extracted from a running kernel by reading
218 /proc/config.gz if enabled (below).
221 bool "Enable access to .config through /proc/config.gz"
222 depends on IKCONFIG && PROC_FS
224 This option enables access to the kernel configuration file
225 through /proc/config.gz.
229 bool "Configure standard kernel features (for small systems)"
231 This option allows certain base kernel options and settings
232 to be disabled or tweaked. This is for specialized
233 environments which can tolerate a "non-standard" kernel.
234 Only use this if you really know what you are doing.
237 bool "Load all symbols for debugging/kksymoops" if EMBEDDED
240 Say Y here to let the kernel print out symbolic crash information and
241 symbolic stack backtraces. This increases the size of the kernel
242 somewhat, as all symbols have to be loaded into the kernel image.
245 bool "Include all symbols in kallsyms"
246 depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && KALLSYMS
248 Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions, for nicer
249 OOPS messages. Some debuggers can use kallsyms for other
250 symbols too: say Y here to include all symbols, and you
251 don't care about adding 300k to the size of your kernel.
255 config KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS
256 bool "Do an extra kallsyms pass"
259 If kallsyms is not working correctly, the build will fail with
260 inconsistent kallsyms data. If that occurs, log a bug report and
261 turn on KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS which should result in a stable build.
262 Always say N here unless you find a bug in kallsyms, which must be
263 reported. KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS is only a temporary workaround while
264 you wait for kallsyms to be fixed.
267 bool "Enable futex support" if EMBEDDED
270 Disabling this option will cause the kernel to be built without
271 support for "fast userspace mutexes". The resulting kernel may not
272 run glibc-based applications correctly.
275 bool "Enable eventpoll support" if EMBEDDED
278 Disabling this option will cause the kernel to be built without
279 support for epoll family of system calls.
281 source "drivers/block/Kconfig.iosched"
283 config CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_SIZE
284 bool "Optimize for size" if EMBEDDED
285 default y if ARM || H8300
288 Enabling this option will pass "-Os" instead of "-O2" to gcc
289 resulting in a smaller kernel.
291 WARNING: some versions of gcc may generate incorrect code with this
292 option. If problems are observed, a gcc upgrade may be needed.
299 bool "Use full shmem filesystem" if EMBEDDED
301 The shmem is an internal filesystem used to manage shared memory.
302 It is backed by swap and manages resource limits. It is also exported
303 to userspace as tmpfs if TMPFS is enabled. Disabling this
304 option replaces shmem and tmpfs with the much simpler ramfs code,
305 which may be appropriate on small systems without swap.
307 endmenu # General setup
314 menu "Loadable module support"
317 bool "Enable loadable module support"
319 Kernel modules are small pieces of compiled code which can
320 be inserted in the running kernel, rather than being
321 permanently built into the kernel. You use the "modprobe"
322 tool to add (and sometimes remove) them. If you say Y here,
323 many parts of the kernel can be built as modules (by
324 answering M instead of Y where indicated): this is most
325 useful for infrequently used options which are not required
326 for booting. For more information, see the man pages for
327 modprobe, lsmod, modinfo, insmod and rmmod.
329 If you say Y here, you will need to run "make
330 modules_install" to put the modules under /lib/modules/
331 where modprobe can find them (you may need to be root to do
337 bool "Module unloading"
340 Without this option you will not be able to unload any
341 modules (note that some modules may not be unloadable
342 anyway), which makes your kernel slightly smaller and
343 simpler. If unsure, say Y.
345 config MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD
346 bool "Forced module unloading"
347 depends on MODULE_UNLOAD && EXPERIMENTAL
349 This option allows you to force a module to unload, even if the
350 kernel believes it is unsafe: the kernel will remove the module
351 without waiting for anyone to stop using it (using the -f option to
352 rmmod). This is mainly for kernel developers and desperate users.
355 config OBSOLETE_MODPARM
360 You need this option to use module parameters on modules which
361 have not been converted to the new module parameter system yet.
365 bool "Module versioning support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
366 depends on MODULES && EXPERIMENTAL
368 Usually, you have to use modules compiled with your kernel.
369 Saying Y here makes it sometimes possible to use modules
370 compiled for different kernels, by adding enough information
371 to the modules to (hopefully) spot any changes which would
372 make them incompatible with the kernel you are running. If
376 bool "Automatic kernel module loading"
379 Normally when you have selected some parts of the kernel to
380 be created as kernel modules, you must load them (using the
381 "modprobe" command) before you can use them. If you say Y
382 here, some parts of the kernel will be able to load modules
383 automatically: when a part of the kernel needs a module, it
384 runs modprobe with the appropriate arguments, thereby
385 loading the module if it is available. If unsure, say Y.
390 depends on (SMP && MODULE_UNLOAD) || HOTPLUG_CPU
392 Need stop_machine() primitive.